Positive identity verification is critical in many types of transactions and security procedures. For example, signatures, fingerprints or images of faces are compared to establish identity. Creation of fraudulent identities or the misrepresentation of an individual's identity can result in fraudulent transactions and the breach of security systems. At present, such positive identification means as drivers' licenses, picture identification cards, hand-written signatures, personal identification numbers, fingerprints, retinal scans, voice prints and other ways of uniquely identifying personal characteristics are used. However, these prior art methods of identity verification exhibit one or more of the following characteristics: 1) they do not offer sufficient reliability for most positive personal identification applications; 2) the technology required for their implementation is too expensive for wholesale adoption by entire industries; 3) they do not offer ease of use, which is critical for most applications of personal identification; 4) the technology required to implement them in a wide-scale manner is not yet mature enough to guarantee sufficient reliability; 5) the recurring cost of using the technology is too high for most applications of personal identification; 6) the data used for identity verification is not maintained in a secure manner and is almost universally held by the person presenting it as the form of verification, thereby allowing for fraudulent alteration of the verification data; 7) processes for building accurate verification databases for wide-spread use are impractical; and 8) the process of verification does not include sufficient steps to ensure that the individual responsible for identity verification is accountable to ensure that identity verification is accurately performed.
One system which relies on positive identity verification for transactions is the credit/debit and charge card system. Credit cards are an increasingly popular means for consumers to complete transactions. However, part of the costs incurred from the convenience of using credit cards is the burgeoning growth of credit card fraud. Because there are trillions of dollars of credit card transactions made each year, which depend on the fact that the person presenting the form of payment is actually the person having the legal right to use the underlying account, even a small percentage of fraudulent transactions results in billions of lost dollars. The cost of this fraud is paid for, indirectly, by the consumers in the form of higher credit card interest rates and fees and, in part, by the merchants accepting such credit cards in the form of higher transaction commissions.
Methods used to combat fraud have been the use of holographic images on cards, the need for a validation requester to obtain transaction approval, the encoding of cardholder information on magnetic strips on the back of the card, as well as signature verification. A number of patents have issued on identification devices and methods. Of particular note is U.S. Pat. No. 5,321,751, issued to Ray, et al. on Jun. 14, 1994. Other prior art references of note are U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,358, issued to Axelrod, et al. on Aug. 9, 1994, U.S. Pat. No. 5,095,196, issued to Miyata on Mar. 10, 1992, U.S. Pat. No. 5,259,025, issued to Monroe, et al. on Nov. 2, 1993, U.S. Pat. No. 4,995,081, issued to Leighton, et al. on Feb. 19, 1991, U.S. Pat. No. 4,991,205, issued Lemelson on Feb. 5, 1991, U.S. Pat. No. 5,053,608, issued to Senanayake on Oct. 1, 1991, U.S. Pat. No. 5,131,038, issued to Puhl, et al. on Jul. 14, 1992 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,993,068, issued to Piosenka, et al. on Feb. 12, 1991. As noted above, one of the underlying deficiencies of all of these prior art identification systems is that they all rely, in some manner, on information encoded on the credit card being presented. While some of these references include sophisticated encryption algorithms, the fact remains that giving access to the information to the card users lends itself to the potential for reverse engineering and overcoming even the most sophisticated of encryption means.
In the recent past, Citibank introduced a credit card with a digital likeness of the authorized user provided on the card itself. As the Ray patent discloses, the photographic image on the Citibank card resulted in an initial drop in fraud in the New York test market estimated as high as 67 percent. However, as Ray also explains, the Citibank photo card system, like other forms of identity verification that are distributed to the public will eventually be defeated by sophisticated counterfeiting.
An additional difficulty with most prior art verification methods is that they all require the use of a special credit card incorporating some form of identification means. Thus, in order for their use to gain widespread acceptance, replacement of existing credit cards and credit card manufacturing equipment must be accomplished.
The disclosed invention offers a number of advances over prior art identity verification systems and methods, which overcome many of the limitations found in such prior art systems. The first, and perhaps the most significant advantage of the disclosed invention is that the positive identity verification system stores the verification data at a remote site and thereby does not give criminals access to the identity verification medium. This is significant in that any time a potential counterfeiter is afforded the opportunity to access the verification medium, there is the potential that the medium can be corrupted, regardless of the level of security sophistication incorporated into the system. A second, and again significant advantage of the disclosed invention is that the system is completely independent of the credit cards whose users the system is designed to positively identify. Thus, the disclosed invention does not require the modification or replacement of existing credit cards, which would be an almost insurmountable task. Furthermore, the segregation of the identity verification medium from the credit cards themselves allows the system disclosed herein to be used in conjunction with any number of credit cards.
Additionally, low cost disposable cameras and access to drivers' license databases, which are maintained by all of the states, makes wide-scale implementation of the system and method convenient and cost effective. Finally, having an interface to credit authorization agencies resident at the remote database location reduces the hardware needed at the point of verification as well as at the remote database locations, thereby reducing the costs of the overall verification service.